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Be nice to programmers

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Re: Be nice to programmers

#31

Post by daenz »

wvenable wrote: post #23
daenz wrote: post #6

It sounds like a plateau, where he's not getting noticeably better from the mistakes he's making (so that he's not making them as much with each chunk of code he writes). Maybe this happens when you're close to your full potential?

Programming always gets more difficult. I'm a much better developer than I was 10 years ago and I don't make the same design or development mistakes. But instead of writing perfect code, I'm working on larger and more difficult problems. In fact I'm now responsible for so many more platforms, systems, and programs that I probably spend more time dealing with problems than ever before.

I guess my take on it is different. The things that I've found to be the source of bugs/problems for me are areas that can scale to larger problems. Things like component communication, algorithm edge cases, typos, poor memory management, etc. For me, the error rate slowly goes down, because I've learned to compensate for my weaknesses. Maybe your (and his) weaknesses are not as portable to other and larger problems/systems?

Re: Be nice to programmers

#33

Post by jerf »

The punches are pulled in this piece. Not only is the compiler continuously complaining, once you ship code, your customers call in to complain about every conceivable bug and a great deal that weren't conceivable. You can have thousands of happy customers, but you as the developer will hear from the three guys with obscure configurations and bizarre setups encountering bugs. Shipping software is ten seconds of "Hooray", followed immediate by a breakdown of what terrible things are already wrong with the next release.

I'm surprised any of us can hold up under the withering torrent of negativity that is any serious programming job.

I actually don't mean this as a complaint, either. I've adjusted. I've been doing this for 15 years. But I've been sort of stepping back lately and looking at my job from other points of view, especially as I deal with coworkers who aren't so adjusted/adapted, and not only do I now understand where they are coming from, I find myself wondering how adaptation is even possible. It's absurd how negative the interactions are. Keep track someday of your professional interactions and look at how many of them are negative; bug reports, missed deadlines, "we can't do that", etc. Or perhaps, don't, if you've never thought about this before. I sure hope you have an otherwise positive workplace.

Re: Be nice to programmers

#34

Post by Sakes »

This guy has not discovered what it means to be a programmer, he is simply in a phase of his programming life. Chasing down bugs all the time? Why? I don't do this, and when I run across a bug it is usually a quick fix and not a big deal.

The goal is not to write it perfectly without bugs. The goal is to release it perfectly without bugs, and to do this all you have to do is test your code often as you make changes to it. (alt tab || cmd tab is your best friend)

Now, if you are running into bugs that take you 4+ hours to resolve, you simply have not been programming long enough. Over time these will be trivial issues for you.

What is amazing about being a programmer is the ability to create amazing things. Being a programmer is not awesome because writing conditionals and for loops are badass.

Re: Be nice to programmers

#35

Post by swalsh »

dubcanada wrote: post #8
adjwilli wrote: post #3

I have a very intelligent friend who try as he might cannot learn programming. He has interests all over the academic board and teaches two unrelated courses. I think I understand now why he cannot. He's an eternal optimist. I tell him he's selectively ADD about programming, but maybe he's just allergic to the negativity of it all.

He can't be that intelligent if he is externally optimistic about everything. Part of being smart makes you aware of the negatives of everything.

Sometimes I feel like people are starting to go out of their way to make it onto the "Shit HN Says" Twitter stream.

Re: Be nice to programmers

#36

Post by pnathan »

dustingetz wrote: post #9

TLDR: write better code functional programmers get to express their ideas as code imperative programmers are so busy playing whack-a-mole with their bugs that they don't have time to think about new ideas just look at the research[1] coming out of the Clojure functional programming community - especially Datomic. once you learn how to get your defect rate under control, you have time to explore crazy awesome new idea…

> functional programmers get to express their ideas as code

The flaw is in us. Our ideas are malformed and flawed. Simply expressing ideas is not enough.

Re: Be nice to programmers

#37

Post by indiecore »

This is extremely true. I love the phase where you are just building putting pieces together, solving interesting problems. Then QA comes in and tears your shit apart, gives extremely unhelpful advice and generally just kick over your sandcastle.

Re: Be nice to programmers

#38

Post by steve8918 »

I get what he's saying, but I think he answered it himself, when he questioned if he was being overly dramatic. He is being really over-dramatic.

I would love to hear about any occupation where the negatives aren't run into in a similar way that he describes programming.

That being said, the one thing that I dislike about programmers in general is that I think we believe we sound smarter if we figure out ways how an idea won't work. It's annoying when you come up with a new idea, and all you hear is a litany of reasons why it won't work.

The most important lesson I learned was soon after I had moved to the Valley, and I gave a suggestion to one of the senior engineers. Instead of shooting it down immediately like others loved doing, he simply said something like "Okay, I'm not sold on it but give it a shot." I had been prepared for a lengthy argument over why my idea was good, and I was taken aback at his immediate open-mindedness. It's something I've taken to heart since then.

Re: Be nice to programmers

#39

Post by tomjen3 »

jerf wrote: post #33

The punches are pulled in this piece. Not only is the compiler continuously complaining, once you ship code, your customers call in to complain about every conceivable bug and a great deal that weren't conceivable. You can have thousands of happy customers, but you as the developer will hear from the three guys with obscure configurations and bizarre setups encountering bugs. Shipping software is ten seconds of "Hoor…

Humans can adapt to almost anything.

But for me, it is a matter of not caring about the bugs but enjoying fixing them.

Re: Be nice to programmers

#40

Post by mikegerwitz »

Sakes wrote: post #34

This guy has not discovered what it means to be a programmer, he is simply in a phase of his programming life. Chasing down bugs all the time? Why? I don't do this, and when I run across a bug it is usually a quick fix and not a big deal. The goal is not to write it perfectly without bugs. The goal is to release it perfectly without bugs, and to do this all you have to do is test your code often as you make changes t…

> Now, if you are running into bugs that take you 4+ hours to resolve, you simply have not been programming long enough.

I'm sorry, but that statement is untrue; there is no generalization for the term "bug". They can be as simple as "your borders on this web page are misaligned" to a subtle memory leak that can only be reproduced on a small fraction of users' systems. Or maybe the bug is a fundamental design flaw that requires rethinking the entire project (oops).

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